


beneath the rising sun

by shatterthelight



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: F/F, Hair Braiding, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2018-12-30 06:18:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12102603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shatterthelight/pseuds/shatterthelight
Summary: Kahlan twines her fingers in the shadowed gold of Cara's hair. Now, her darker dreams are usually about losing Richard, or Zedd, or Cara. Or herself, to the beast she sometimes still fears sleeps in her ribcage.She wonders what images are holding Cara hostage right now, wonders how many nights Cara has spent trapped in her head while Kahlan slept nearby, oblivious.





	beneath the rising sun

"Maybe I should just cut it off."

She says it when Cara is halfway through braiding the long tresses that fall to Kahlan's waist, weaving her dark hair together with deft, practiced fingers.

"I just told you it was dangerous." Cara's hand brushes briefly against the back of Kahlan's neck, and the heat of it lingers for a beat. "I didn't say you had to cut it off."

"You said it was impractical."

"I meant dangerous. The way it flies everywhere while you're fighting. It gets plastered all over your face. That's dangerous." Her words and her fingers both pause. And then she repeats: "I didn't say you had to cut it off."

There's an odd catch beneath the usual irreverence of Cara's voice. Kahlan considers asking and then, thinking better of it, bites her lip. Her shoulders have been stiff all day, so she exhales slowly and makes the effort to relax them. Zedd has told her, several times now, that she's far too on edge lately, so she's been trying, with wavering success, to unwind. "I know. It was just a thought."

"Mhm." Cara, having resumed her task, is now more than halfway down Kahlan's back. "You'd never do it, anyway."

And like that, Kahlan's shoulders stiffen again. "I could, if I wanted to," she says indignantly, though the twinge in her stomach tells her otherwise. Her mother had spent hours brushing through her knots and tangles when she was very little; cutting her hair would feel like cutting away that small connection. But Kahlan has never responded well to people telling her what she can and cannot do. "I would."

Cara twists the end of the braid to keep it held together and smooths it over. Kahlan imagines she's admiring her own handiwork and warms at the thought.

"Leave it like that," Cara instructs.

"Thank you, really," Kahlan says. "I've never put much thought into it before. I guess I've just always preferred the way it feels to leave it loose."

"Yes, well, I'd prefer it if you didn't lose the upperhand in battle because you were blinded by your own untamed mane." Cara rolls her eyes, not unaffectionately. "You can take it down at night."

"You'll just have to redo it tomorrow."

"I'll redo it every day," and it's matter-of-fact, as if Cara is saying _of course I will, why wouldn't I, we're friends, after all._

Kahlan resists the urge to reach over her shoulder and run her hand over the details of the braid, lest she ruin such meticulous work. And here is Cara, offering to do it all over again tomorrow, and the next day, and every day after that, and Kahlan feels... guilty. Like a problem that needs solving. "...Maybe I _should_ just cut it."

A narrowed, unfriendly expression ghosts Cara’s face. Just for a moment. Just long enough for Kahlan to lose her breath. "Do what you want."

 

* * *

 

Richard meets her new hairstyle with confusion that quickly shifts into acceptance; when Kahlan explains Cara's reasoning, he even agrees with her.

"Yet you've never said anything," Kahlan teases, playfully bumping into his side as they walk.

"I hadn't thought about it before," he admits. "It never seemed important. It's easy for the little details to slip right under us."

That night, Kahlan and Cara resume their earlier position – Cara kneeling on the ground, Kahlan sitting right in front of her, both of them a little closer than necessary and pretending not to notice – so Cara can unravel Kahlan's braid. Minutes upon minutes of careful work, undone in a matter of seconds.

Cara runs her fingers through Kahlan's unbound hair and breaks the silence. "Not long before I joined you," she's barely audible over the crackling of the campfire, "the others held me down. Beat me. Sliced off my hair."

She stops abruptly and continues combing. It takes several moments for Kahlan to realize _the others_ means  _the other Mord'Sith_ , and understanding washes over her.

"Cara..."

"Don't." Cara stops combing and lays a hand on Kahlan's shoulder, and Kahlan, taking the hint, swivels her body around so that she and Cara are face-to-face. In the dim amber firelight, she can see that Cara's eyes are dry. There is no sadness, just honesty and exposure. "I'm not asking for sympathy. I just thought you should- that you'd like to know."

Kahlan opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again, and surprises herself with what comes out. "You remind me of my mother when you brush my hair like that."

Cara grimaces and shoves her. "You are an absolute _mood-killer."_

 _"_ What?"

"I tell you something serious and you sit there and tell me I remind you of your _mother_ , are you _kidding me_ -"

Laughing, Kahlan reaches forward and laces her fingers with Cara's, and Cara laughs too. It's brief, and it's low, but it's genuine.

"You're awful." Cara pulls her hands away. "I'm never telling you anything ever again."

"That's fair." Kahlan smiles, but a sinking feeling she can't identify weighs down on her. She rocks backward and watches the flames dance, not sure what to say next. After a while, Cara's hands find their way back Kahlan's hair, and Kahlan shifts her posture to make it easier.

"Kahlan?" Cara whispers. "Don't cut your hair."

"I won't," she says, a promise for the both of them.

 

* * *

 

And so a routine falls into place: every morning Cara braids Kahlan's hair, and every night she lets it down and takes a few extra minutes to brush her hands through the tangles.

They talk, sometimes, but never like that first night. Cara's walls are up again, high and thick enough as to be almost tangible, and Kahlan is too wise a woman to push past her boundaries. So she waits through the silences, treasuring the moments that Cara speaks at all and resigning to the belief that this is all she’s going to get.

These days, Kahlan’s nerves are on such alert that she struggles to fall asleep. She’s spent countless nights like this one now, laying on her back and staring up at the stars while her blood roars in her ears. Sometimes she’ll press her eyes shut, attempting to trick her body into thinking it’s asleep, but rarely does this work. So she focuses, instead, on the smell of fresh dirt and dead ash, on the sound of rustling leaves and everyone else’s breathing.

And she notices.

Kahlan pushes herself into a sitting position and looks around at her sleeping friends, eyes straining to focus through the darkness. Richard is closest to her – she’d been right beside him at first, but she’d eventually moved a little ways away so her fidgeting wouldn’t bother him – and Zedd is nearby, too, but Cara is the farthest. This isn’t unusual, and Cara sleeps a lot closer than she had in the beginning, but her air of solitude has never wholly lifted.

Cara’s breathing is harder and less steady than Richard’s and Zedd’s. She often breathes like that in her sleep, Kahlan realizes; she's never thought anything of it before, but now she finds it cause for disquiet. She hesitates, though not for long, before crawling over to Cara’s side, and she can just make out the harsh crease in Cara’s forehead and the way her fists clench and unclench at the ground.

As a child, there had been a time that Kahlan's nightmares came whenever she slept, relentless visions of her mother fading away into the howling wind, her father growing as large as his anger, hundreds of hands grabbing for her throat while voices whisper  _this is how it feels this is how it feels,_ phantoms that tormented her during the night and haunted her throughout the day. Eventually, after the Sisters found her and Dennee, these nightmares had grown farther and fewer in between, until it was rarer for them to happen than to not.

Kahlan twines her fingers in the shadowed gold of Cara's hair. Now, her darker dreams are usually about losing Richard, or Zedd, or Cara. Or herself, to the beast she sometimes still fears sleeps in her ribcage. 

She wonders what images are holding Cara hostage right now, wonders how many nights Cara has spent trapped in her head while Kahlan slept nearby, oblivious.

Stroking her hand through Cara’s hair, Kahlan marvels at how soft and untangled it is. Initially, Cara tenses, but then she appears to ease, and her breathing calms. Every time it hitches again, Kahlan uses her other hand to take one of Cara’s and squeeze it.  _I’m right here_. She ends up in such a rhythm that she doesn’t notice when Cara’s eyes flutter open, doesn’t realize she’s awake until Cara lashes out and grabs Kahlan’s wrist.

“What are you _doing?_ ” Cara hisses, harsh as a killing blow. Kahlan is so startled that she’d yelped when Cara had grabbed her and now instinctively tries to pull away, but Cara’s hold tightens, the fire of her green eyes burning a hole in the night.

“I- I’m sorry,” Kahlan chokes out, the skin beneath Cara’s grip turning to ice. “ _Let go_.” She yanks her arm away, harder this time, and breaks out of the hold. “I was just-”

“I don’t care.” Cara is already standing when she says it. “I don’t _care_.”

“Cara-”

Kahlan scrambles to her feet, but Cara begins to duck away before she can stop her, and all Kahlan can do is follow.

“Leave me _alone._ ”

“ _Cara_ ,” she says desperately. “Please stop.”

And Cara does, only long enough to whip around and glare at her with cold, glassy eyes. “I don’t want your _pity_ ,” she spits, and Kahlan watches helplessly as she stalks off into the trees.

Worried, she looks over at Richard and Zedd, but they haven’t woken. She curls up on the ground and tries, once more, to drift off, but she only manages to toss and turn, even more wide awake than before. Cara might be closed off, but it has been a long time since she last looked at Kahlan with such hostility.

Cara doesn’t return. Kahlan, foregoing sleep, follows her invisible trail.

When she finds her, Cara is sitting on the ground, knees drawn up to her chest, and staring at nothing, all of her heat having cooled into rigid isolation. Wordlessly, Kahlan sits beside her. Cara does not so much as glance her direction, but neither does she protest, so Kahlan ventures to speak. “I don’t pity you.”

“Spare me.”

“I really don’t.” Cara has seen too much and felt too much and been too much for a single lifetime, and Kahlan knows it better than anyone. It’s something they’ve never acknowledged aloud, this mutual understanding that they’ve both survived storms that no one should have to weather, but it's a knowledge they have carried in nearly all the time they've known one another. No, Kahlan does not pity Cara Mason. She admires her. She  _respects_  her. And when she looks at Cara, she cannot help but see herself. These are words she doesn’t dare say, but they reverberate within her mind so loudly that perhaps Cara hears them anyway.

What Kahlan does say is, “I like your hair.”

That earns her a surly look. “Flattery does nothing for me, Kahlan Amnell.”

She laughs and Cara finally cracks a grin. It drops away just as fast, but Cara's tone is still sincere, if a little sullen, when she says, “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

Kahlan doesn’t say _it_ _’s alright_ , because it isn’t, exactly – they’re supposed to be past this, the anger and the mistrust. She doesn't begrudge her for it either, though, and to show her this, she shuffles around behind Cara and, once more, runs a hand through her golden hair.

“You’re ridiculous,” Cara huffs.

“I’ll stop if you want me to.”

Cara huffs again, and Kahlan expects her to push her off. But then Cara says quietly, “I don't mind it.”

Cara’s hair is not long enough to braid, so Kahlan keeps combing her hands through it, brushing out knots that aren’t there. If she didn’t know better, she might even think Cara is leaning into her touch.

“Remind me,” Cara murmurs, slow and soft and solemn. “How old were you when your mother died?”

“Five.” Kahlan's chest tightens. This wound no longer bleeds, but she'll wear the scar of it forever. “I’ve missed her every single day since.”

Cara lets out a long breath and says, “She loved of you.”

Kahlan says, “She did.”

They don’t speak again after that. But they sit there for hours, Kahlan gently combing Cara’s hair while tears spill, silent but free, from Cara’s eyes. When dawn breaks, they lean against each other, two heavy hearts beating side by side beneath the rising sun.


End file.
